The Gossamer Mage

by Julie E. Czerneda

“Look out!” he shouted. The made-flies—they could be nothing else, though he didn’t recognize them—began to land on the farmers, attacking any bared skin. Tiny bites, but each tore away a bloody chunk of flesh. The men dropped their tools, frantically batting the creatures away.

  A swarm headed toward him and Maleonarial tensed, but the made-flies turned at the last instant, going instead at the hands and face of the man who held him. With a startled cry, the man shoved him away and flailed wildly, trying to protect his eyes. Others covered their faces with their arms. One was too late, and cupped a hand where an eye had been, blood streaming between his fingers.

  Maleonarial flinched each time one of the made-flies flew close, but they had no interest in him. Their intention was sickeningly clear—they’d been created to harm the villagers. But who would do such a thing?

  Only a mage scribe could. No wonder the farmers had hunted him down.

  “They’re na bit’n him!” the big smithy shouted. “They’re his work!” With a roar, he picked up a shovel and ran at the mage, made-flies a halo around his gore-covered face.

  Something struck the smithy from the side, ripped off an arm, tore away his head with a casual snap and toss. Pounced on the next screaming farmer like a weasel among chicks. Playful. Dreadful.

  Somehow Maleonarial stayed on his feet. The made-beast was—it wasn’t anything he knew. Horny plates, claws, teeth come to life in some improbable body. Eyes that were slits of malice.

  Eyes that never once looked his way.

  Before the echoes of the smithy’s scream died away across the river valley, every farmer lay dead. Worse than dead. They were hunks of meat, lacking any vestige of what they’d been. Fathers. Brothers. Husbands. Friends. Now only flesh, and the thing that prowled over it, tasted it with a purple tongue, but didn’t eat.

  As though already sated.

  Maleonarial sank to his abused knees, supporting himself with his hands. The stench of new death choked his nostrils. “Gossamer,” he named it, sure of only that. The monster didn’t turn, deaf to his voice.

  His?

  He squeezed his eyes shut, but could still hear the dreadful beast as it walked and licked and purred to itself.

  His?

  No. He shuddered with relief. No. Strange, those gossamers that had come to life with his pen, but not fearsome. Some might have been beautiful, in their way, though he hadn’t cared, too full of disappointment as he watched another scrap of his life fly or run or float away with a laugh.

  Maleonarial opened his eyes to study the monster. This—this terrifying shape would have burned into his mind forever. Could it have come from one of his, then? Not by all he knew. Gossamers emerged as they would be—so he’d been taught, so he’d believed. Either the accumulated wisdom of the mage school could not be trusted or . . . something inside him eased . . . this wasn’t from one of his intentions.

  Then whose?

  The dead deserved better than his fuddled reasoning. He’d find no answers here. Maleonarial assessed himself. Sore. Bone-tired. They’d been rough, but had done no more harm in their handling of him than The Deathless Goddess. She hadn’t killed him yet.

  An ownerless pitchfork became a staff to help him stand. He swayed for a moment, cursing the weakness of his arms, the treacherous wobble of his legs. The monster, now curled among corpses, paid no notice. The made-flies had settled like soot on the barley nearby, wings still.

  The innocent.

  Leaving the bloody harvest, he shuffled between rows of barley. The skin of his neck crawled to think what was behind him. His pant legs were quickly soaked by the wet grain but, small mercy, the sun warmed his cloakless shoulders, easing their ache. The village was an impossible number of steps, so he didn’t look up after a while. Downhill, at least. If he fell, it would be in the right direction.

  Though his fury ran so cold and so deep, Maleonarial knew he’d find a way to climb the tallest mountain of Her Fist if necessary. A mage scribe who could intend such evil was the true monster, whether gossamer or made.

  He had the will. There remained one problem.

  “I hope you’ve taken care of him already,” he panted to the errant breeze that nudged rain-wet barley across his narrow path. “Because I have no idea how.”

  * * *

  They were too late.

  No one spoke the words. They climbed from the wagon to stand ankle-deep in blood-caked mud, surrounded by destruction. The accusing sun penetrated every shadow, revealed stripped bones and hanks of hair, rags and gauds, and ruin.

  In their stunned silence, the Designate stepped forward. Her dainty pearled slippers turned red. Topaz glittered in the daylight as she lifted her face from side to side. The Deathless Goddess would see it all.

  She might care.

  She might not.

  What he’d give for a trustworthy god . . .

  The wooden beams. They hadn’t been broken or burned. They’d been squeezed into splinters. Saeleonarial reached out blindly, found a shoulder for support.

  Domozuk was quick to step close and wrap an arm around his waist. “You should sit—”

  He shook his head. “No time. Nim. Nim. Are you all right?” Stupid thing to say. Of course he wasn’t. But what else could he say? Be grateful you were away in Tiler’s Hold, being dressed to suit Insom’s foppish court, while everyone you knew and loved died by violence. Too late by hours, from the look of it. By meaningless, pointless hours.

  The young farmer stood with Harn. At his name, he turned his bandaged face, exposed flesh the color of ash, his one eye dilated and wild. “Sir.”

  No mage scribe, yet with that one word, Nim Millerson said everything. Saeleonarial’s heart steadied in his chest. Was he not the scribemaster? Was he not the hope this boy had brought with him? Had he not vowed to be responsible for all who intended magic? That he’d made that vow expecting his thorniest problem to be recalcitrant masters and arbitrating fees made no difference, standing in the blood of Riverhill.

  Magic, used for good or ill, was his responsibility.

  Saeleonarial found the strength to pull free of his servant, to straighten. “I’ll find out what happened here. I promise.”

  “Look!” Harn shouted. “Someone’s alive!” He began to hurry forward, feet slipping in the mud.

  Rid grabbed him. “’Ware, lad!” This an urgent whisper, with a guarded look at the figure emerging from the shadows the scribemaster understood too well. “Na trust him.”

  The student was bewildered. “He’s hurt—”

  A bent body. Slow cautious steps. The movements of someone injured? Or of an old man, wary of the mud, a very dangerous old man?

  “Think.” Saeleonarial braced himself. “Who would have survived here?”

  Nim’s face was ash. Harn’s suffused with blood. “Maleonarial.” His mouth worked as if the word left a foul taste.

  The worm eyes of the Designate now locked on the figure shuffling toward them.

  Justice for the dead. Safety for the living.

  Why did it have to be his dearest friend?

  “I’ll talk to him.” As if there could conceivably be an explanation for what had happened here.

  Nim shaded his eye, then dropped his hand. “It’s na mage, sir. That be one o’mine. Cil. The knacker’s boy.” He drew himself up, jaw firm. “We tol’ him t’ hide, y’see. He’s na right inna head. Simple. I’ll tak’m wi’ me.” With a helpless shrug. “Tho’ I dinna know where.”

  Young, this farmer, but already looking past his grief to care for someone else. Saeleonarial nodded to himself. “You’ll both be welcome at the school, Nim Millerson. We’ll find work for your hands. A home.”

  “Sir. Thank you.” Nim ducked his head respectfully, but his jaw clenched. “No, sir. I’ll na take poor Cil near magic or them as use it. ’E’s seen ’nuf.”

  The
figure lurched over a fallen beam, recovered his balance with practiced ease. Not a boy, Saeleonarial judged, his smile of welcome freezing on his face. Nor a man. He’d seen his share of twisted bodies, living by the bay. Fishermen lost hands, broke limbs, mended in crooked fashion if at all. Cil’s body defied reason. His left side was larger than the right by half again. Hands, feet, limbs. One nostril gaped wide and red, the side of his mouth ballooned outward, revealing decayed and hideous teeth. His left eye was normal sized, but set adrift in a huge socket, lids drooping down. The left ear had suffered indignity after birth, the upper part cut away.

  How could such a babe have grown to adulthood, let alone survived whatever had happened here?

  Cil lurched to a halt. His good eye peered up at them, for he stood bent to his right. “Mine,” he said, the word distorted by his mouth but clear. “My village. Strangers go ’way!”

  Strangers? Did he not know Nim?

  Of course not. Insom’s fancy velvets, the bandaged face. The farm lad looked like some noble’s brat, sporting a cut from a duel or tumble from a horse. The kind who probably laughed when they rode by the poor cripple. “Peace, my good man,” the scribemaster said gently. “We mean you no harm. Do you know who did this?”

  “I know.” Cil made a hideous sound, a choking wheeze Saeleonarial belatedly realized was the only laugh possible from that body. “‘Good man’ knows.”

  Nim stepped forward, hands out and trembling. “Cil. Did anyone else survive? My—any one?”

  “All meat. All dead. Only Cil.” He tilted his lopsided head, opened the lids of his right eye to stare. “Know you!”

  The piles of broken wood shuddered to life. Huge shapes emerged from the rubble, sinuous and long. Fangs hung from wide open mouths, dripping venom. Their eyes—

  “To the wagon!” Domozuk shouted, pulled at him. “Hurry!”

  Their eyes—

  Topaz.

  Resisting, Saeleonarial whirled to stare at the Designate. Silk flowed along her shapely limbs, caught by a breeze. Jewels took fire from the sun, including the gems that were Her eyes. Eyes that lived.

  What did it mean?

  Harn and Nim took Cil by the arms when he didn’t move with them, dragging him toward the wagon despite his wild struggles to be free. “Mine!” he shouted. “Mine!”

  “Riverhill’s gone,” Nim gasped out as they fought with Cil. “Come w’us, Cil. Easy now.”

  Saeleonarial half expected the made-oxen to be nothing more than ash by now, but they stood ready, oblivious to the massive horrors squirming closer and closer.

  Cil, stronger than he looked or manic, broke free, pushing Harn into the mud before lurching away.

  Nim chased after him.

  The horrors, as one, turned to follow.

  * * *

  “Nonononono!!” Cil choked on bile and spat, but nothing lived, nothing appeared. Nothing was right.

  “Cil, wait!”

  Hands on him again. Strong hands. Hands always hurt. These hurt. “Mine!” he cried, twisting to bite.

  The false farmer was too quick. They were always too quick. “Easy, Cil.” One hand patted him. As if he was stupid. As if he was slow. Meat to walk stupid and slow to the hammer.

  “Mine,” he boasted as he stared past velvet at the death rearing to strike. “You be the meat.”

  * * *

  Three hundred bells. A mage scribe who’d survived such accomplishment could command any price. All Maleonarial wanted was air in his lungs and the ability to move his aged bones faster.

  He ignored the gem-eyed gossamers, except to avoid being crushed by their swollen bodies. They ignored him, intent on the pair of villagers clinging to one another in what had been the market square. Survivors! Thump went his pitchfork staff against a broken bit of plank. He’d reach them first. He must.

  He might. His breaths were shallower now, despite the desperate need of his lungs, and whistled deep inside as though something had cracked. Shouting was out of the question. Three hundred bells. One decent brass gong, he railed to himself, shuffling toward the doomed men. One gong and a hammer to let them know someone cared, someone was coming.

  For whatever good he could do.

  Where was the mage? Sweat stung his eyes as he peered over the writhing gossamers.

  There! A wagon. Figures beside it.

  Wait.

  He knew that brute of a wagon, those ornate lanterns and flags. It belonged to the mage school—to the scribemaster.

  There were figures—five—they saw him. One gestured. He knew that beard.

  Saeleonarial.

  Consumed by hope, Maleonarial stopped and leaned on his staff. He gasped a deeper breath. “Sael! Get the villagers!” Almost no sound came out. He coughed bloody phlegm and dragged in another breath. “The gossamers won’t hurt you! Help them!”

  * * *

  The words were gibberish, impossible to hear over the grunts and slaps of the monsters as they poured onto what had been the road, as they closed on Nim and Cil.

  But no mistaking the glint of bells knotted in that gray mane, more than any other mage. More than any sane man could bear.

  “Maleonarial.” The name hurt to say, but Saeleonarial was sure now.

  There was only one thing left to do.

  “Quickly! The monsters will only attack those from Riverhill,” the scribemaster told the others. “Take the wagon. Save them!” This as Nim pulled Cil—who resisted, poor demented soul—out of reach of the nearest set of fangs.

  He bowed to the Designate. “I will take you to the mage who has gone mad.”

  * * *

  Who was shouting? Who was saying things? Cil shoved Nim to one side, trying to see the newcomer.

  An old dirty man. Dressed in dirty rags. Bells in his dirty hair. A no one. A nothing, leaning on a funny stick.

  Cil tilted his head to see better, squinted, strained. No stick. A fork. A farmer’s fork.

  Bells.

  The stranger in the mountains. The one they said made what was his. His! The one they went to kill with their shovels and axes and forks.

  They hadn’t, had they.

  His creations could kill him. Should kill him. Why didn’t they kill him!? They passed the old dirty man. Went around him. Scared of him.

  While he stood and stared at Cil.

  As if Cil was nothing, unimportant.

  “No!!! Kill him too!” Cil yanked free of Nim at last and ran among the monsters, pounded on their sides with his fists. “Kill him! Make him meat!”

  They ignored him.

  Ignored him.

  As if he was nothing.

  “MineMineMine!!” he wailed, betrayed.

  * * *

  Those with Her Gift know one another. It sings through the blood when the change from child to adult is complete, a song heard by any and all who wear the bells. The knowledge calls one to the other. There is no denying it, as there is no denying when a boy becomes a man. The Deathless Goddess thus anoints those who will sup on magic, and those who will, if able, return Her Gift with their lives. And only those.

  Until now.

  Leaning on the staff—without it he’d be flat on his face in the mud—Maleonarial watched the not-mage try to control his creations. Misshapen—by birth or disease. Older than a boy—not by much. Violent and dangerous—that, beyond doubt.

  How. That was a question to ask. Among many.

  Whether inspired by his pitiful shouts or not, the made-oxen and wagon had reached the villager who was the true intent of the creatures. As a rescue it was more a delaying tactic than of use, since the gossamers merely reared up and began to use their bodies to crush both the made-oxen and wagon and presumably all those inside. So many of them tried to do this at once, they interfered with one another, but it was, Maleonarial thought sadly, a matter of moments.r />
  Then he’d be alone with the not-mage—who, if he stopped screaming in impotent rage at his creations long enough, would simply form a new intention and create it, aimed at him. Then go on to make whatever else came to his twisted mind, never, by the look of him, having to pay life for it.

  And here he’d thought The Deathless Goddess played fair.

  Not that magic would be required to end his life. Really, a rock or piece of wood in those powerful hands would do it.

  Light-headed, he warned himself, gripping the pitchfork more tightly. Not good.

  Though being light-headed explained what he now saw.

  For tubby, sedate Saeleonarial was coming toward him, shooing monsters out of his way as though they were so many sheep, followed by a beautiful girl in lavender silk.

  * * *

  He couldn’t help but wave his hands at the things, though it did no good at all. What did, he quickly realized, was the presence of the Designate. The monsters in her path moved to one side and lay still.

  Once Saeleonarial realized this, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to the besieged wagon. Monsters peeled away.

  The made-oxen were gone. Ash, he noticed with an odd relief, not flesh.

  The wagon was a ruin, but those inside were not. So much for those who’d laughed at the massive thing. Domozuk held a cloth to a wound on his cheek. Rid simply shook his head at the bright-eyed monsters walling them on all sides. Nim helped Harn from the wreckage, the student cradling a wrist most likely broken.

  No time to waste. “Stay with us,” the scribemaster told them.

  Then he pointed. “There, Designate.” His heart shuddered. “That’s the one. Maleonarial. Your mad mage.”

  “Wait!” Nim handed Harn to Rid, coming to Saeleonarial. “You’re wrong,” he said earnestly, tears streaming from his eye. “It’s na mage at all.”

  “No,” agreed the Designate, her eyes writhing. “It’s not.”